inquired<\/a> multiple times about the status of an attack helicopter sale to Egypt, and even facilitated an in-person meeting in Cairo between herself, former lawmakers-turned-lobbyists Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Senator Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and embassy staff.\u00a0Many of these government officials-turned-lobbyists also served as staffers for high-ranking members of Congress and on key congressional committees. Far from being shunned by their former colleagues, they\u2019re often welcomed back as lobbyists. As Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, told Politico, they\u2019re \u201chardly social pariahs to their former colleagues when they leave the Hill for lobbying gigs.\u201dBetween them, approximately half of the foreign agents of Brownstein, Akin, and BGR have experience in the legislative branch, including top staffers for Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). Perhaps most notably, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s former chief of staff, Nadeam Elshami, now works at Brownstein where he lobbies the United States on behalf of the government of Egypt, which has arrested tens of thousands of government critics and dissidents, including several American citizens. A former Democratic House aide told the Hill in 2019 that \u201cPelosi staff who go downtown (to lobby) are hired because they are super smart and know how things work, not because they have special access to her.\u201d Yet, at Brownstein, Nadeam has lobbied Pelosi on numerous occasions, while also makingseveral political contributions to his former boss.And, it\u2019s not just congressional staff who are churning through the revolving door, members of Congress themselves are cashing in on lucrative work for foreign powers. As we previously wrote for Responsible Statecraft, at least 90 members of Congress have lobbied on behalf of foreign governments between 2000 and today And, all three of the firms analyzed here count former members of Congress among their stable of foreign lobbyists. Brownstein and Akin Gump even boast two former chairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Royce and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who went on to represent Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, respectively.In one FARA filing, Ros-Lehtinen even admitted that when she entered Congress she was an outspoken \u201cskeptic\u201d of the UAE, explaining her about-face by declaring that she eventually “fully appreciated the importance of the UAE to U.S. interests in the region.\u201d\u00a0As Royce and Ros-Lehtinen\u2019s work would indicate, many of these government officials-turned- foreign-lobbyists are working for authoritarian regimes, and the firms they work for are being paid handsomely by these autocrats. In fact, according to OpenSecrets, the most lucrative FARA client for each of the three firms in 2021 was a Middle Eastern autocracy. Specifically, BGR earned over $1 million representing Bahrain, Brownstein took in $1.35 million to represent Saudi Arabia, and Akin Gump was paid a whopping $4.5 million to represent the UAE.The experience, knowledge, and connections that these former government officials amassed were not hidden from their clients \u2014 they were the main selling points. These and other lobbying firms are all too eager to boast of their lobbyists’ government connections to attract clients.For example, when Brownstein hired Timothy Keating in December 2021, they touted his \u201cover three decades of high-level legislative and political experience,\u201d including in Congress, the White House, and as a lobbyist for Honeywell. Three months after joining Brownstein, he was lobbying on behalf of the Pakistan Embassy.\u00a0While it is perfectly legal for countries to dish out millions to firms with well-connected former officials to represent them before the U.S. government, it is worth asking if this undermines democratic debate. After all, these former officials are often lobbying their former colleagues, giving them an instant advantage in influencing policy favorable to the country they are representing.This incentive structure may also work to encourage them to audition for their future foreign clients while serving the American people, as it\u2019s not uncommon for lobbyist recruiters to headhunt current members and staff while they\u2019re still working in Congress.In addition, there are national security concerns at play, as many of these former government employees-turned-lobbyists previously had access to top secret information.\u00a0\u201cWe are allowing members of our government who are privy to sensitive and classified information with political knowhow on how our government works to then use that as guns-for-hire for foreign governments,\u201d Raed Jarrar, the Advocacy Director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, the think tank co-founded by Jamal Khashoggi, told Responsible Statecraft.\u00a0Fortunately, some in Congress are well aware of the dangers posed by the revolving door and have taken measures to stop it. Recent bipartisan legislation introduced by Reps. Golden (D-Maine), Porter (D-Calif), and Gosar (R-Ariz.), for example, aims to barsome former government officials from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. The Fighting Foreign Influence Act would \u201cimpose a lifetime ban on former senior U.S. military officers, presidents, vice presidents, other senior executive branch officials, and members of Congress\u201d from lobbying for foreign interests.\u00a0While the Fighting Foreign Influence Act is not a broad ban on government officials writ-large \u2014 congressional staffers, for instance, are absent from the legislation \u2014 it is a vitally important step in the right direction.\u00a0\u201cAsking government officials to deny themselves the opportunity to earn millions of dollars lobbying for foreign governments is almost like Mission Impossible,\u201d said Jarrar. \u201cBut a lifelong ban on at least some of them is extremely important to protect the principle of democratic governance in our country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior congressional staffer quits and goes directly to work for an authoritarian foreign government — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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